I've heard the song several times before, but for some reason today I fell head over heels in love with Anberlin's "Downtown Song".

When I first heard it, and wasn't really paying much attention to the lyrics, it reminded me of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl", and all the other songs from that era about a working class guy falling for a rich girl.

But Joel's song is very much a love song (depending on how you define love, at least). The focus of the lyrics is the girl: how she's tired of her current life and how she's going to get together with him.

Anberlin's song isn't actually a love song at all.

He sees this girl around town ("I watch you walk the streets//wonder who you're thinking of") but there's no indication in the lyrics that he actually knows her, no better than a barista might know a frequent customer. He hopes that she's not in love with anyone else, which is something very different from wishing that she wasn't in love with anyone else. He has no way of knowing if she's actually in love with anyone else or not, because he doesn't actually know her.

Kind of hard to write a love song about someone you don't know. You could argue that he's in love with the idea of this girl rather than the reality of her, but the refrain has absolutely nothing to do with the girl at all.

Only the lonely know
Only the lonely know
Only the lonely know
What nights like these do to me, yeah

He's not calling out to other people who are lovelorn; he's calling out to the lonely. It isn't the girl who is having an affect on him; it's the nights he spends alone.

It's really not a love song. It's a song about loneliness. It's a song about being so lonely that you'll do anything to feel a human connection, even if it's just create a fantasy romance with a stranger.

I keep asking myself if our hands were meant to meet
I know this town is busy but I live on Heartbreak Street

(Also, I don't care what all the lyrics websites say: he is not singing "Public Street." I can't imagine what thematic significance that would have, even to an interpretation of this song that's different than mine.)


It's a very contradictory song, which is what I find so fascinating about it. The tune is so upbeat you could dance to it, but it's not a happy song. The singer thinks he's singing a love song, but the song is much more about how alone he feels. I get the sense that he's putting on a front and lying even to himself.

I really freaking love this song.